Episode 22: Simphiwe Ndzube

In this episode, host Lindsay Preston Zappas talks to L.A. based artist Simphiwe Ndzube. Ndzube talks about his childhood growing up in South Africa and how as an artist he uses his Magical Realist style to blend past experiences with fantasy. Ndzube talks about following his inner child as an intuitive guide to his art making which blends sculpture, painting, and assemblage. Ndzube discusses art-making as a tool for unpacking traumas, and how he uses his own practice to process past experiences. 

“The work is so much based on the openness. I do not judge my work. I bring to it what comes naturally, and I allow it as the finish goes to be whatever it’s going to be. And I think what ends up happening is there is something that comes naturally without dictating and controlling it and wanting to say a specific thing or be a specific thing.” –Simphiwe Ndzube

Simphiwe Ndzube  (b. 1990, Cape Town, South Africa) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA and Cape Town, South Africa. He received his BFA from the Michaelis School of Fine Arts in 2015. Ndzube’s work is characterized by a fundamental interplay between objects, media and two-dimensional surfaces; stitching together a subjective account of the black experience in post-apartheid South Africa from a mythological perspective. Recent exhibitions include INXS: Major Never Before Seen Works by Simphiwe Ndzube, Moffat Takadiwa, and Zhou Yilun, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, USA (2020); Hollywood Babylon: A Re-Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Nicodim, Jeffrey Deitch, and AUTRE Magazine, Los Angeles, USA (2020); Where Water Comes Together With Other Water, The 15th Lyon Biennale, Lyon, France (2019); People, Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, USA (2019); In the Order of Elephants After the Rain, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest, Romania (2019, solo); and New Acquisitions, The Rubell Museum, Miami, USA (2018). His work can be found in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, Lyon, France, and the Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa, among others.